Welcome to my blog, the story of my continuing journey into the World of Zombie Wargames.

Monday 30 March 2020

Onwards ! (another Jimland Expedition)

Earlier this month saw the last expedition of my Friend "K's" last expedition into Jimland, probabl for some time. (you know why).
Sorry about the inevitable, obligatory blurry , photograph on the right showing his expedition in all its glory !
Undetered by his poor showing in his last two expeditions, he was keen on testing himself once more in Jimland.
The Expedition consisted of just the two surviving Explorers from the previous expedition, but included a good number of soldiers and Askari to boost firepower and ten bearers (all carrying food of course).

Once more then :

From the Journal of Fredercik Cartington at Jim's landing,

 "The Royal British Museum of Archaeology Expedition's"
leader Angus McDoughty led yet another expedition into Jimland despite being low on numbers and the recent loss of both his wife and sister in law.
"I was of a mind that I wouldn;t be seeing him or his scout Raymond Grylls ever again"
"Here though, is their exploits as related to me by one of the survivours"

 "By day three we were reduced to six bearers, thanks to them being scared off by native drums in the night, but still plenty of food was available. It did seem that no matter the problems the terrain threw at us, whether mountains or swamp  Ray, our scout never failed to find a way through. perhaps our luck was chnaging for the good.
"Near the end of the first week though, once more a solitary female emerged from where she had been hiding in the mountaiss. 
"I just knew that this spelled doom for the expedition, give Angus' recent record with women.
Our expedition's size was further increased as a soldier also joined us and he had a gun !
"Our luck seemed to have changed as we entered yet more mountains and a way out coudn't be found. Our food, started to cause conern, but due to the discovery of edible rations being found, our hoped were lifted, soon afterwards of course, they were dashed once more by the food turning out to be unedible.

"All our endeavours to survive came to a climax as we were ambushed in a swamp midway through the second week.
Natives with guns to the rear draw first blood
Natives in front close in using cover
The column's bearers break for safety, whilst the expedition returns fire.
A huge snake appears...
...and attacks one of our Askari
The expedition claims its first kill...
...and the Natives' fronttal attack goes in, losing a man.
With the loss of another man, the Native's morale is broken and they flee.
A combination of rifle fire and an Askari rifle-butt, the snake is beaten.
 "With the ambushing Natives seen off, we set off once more Jim's Landing and safety, arrving there with grumbling stomachs and no rations."
"Strangely Angus was in good spirits and looking forward to his next expedition."

"I found out later that the women was Freya Johnsdotter, a huntress who willingly joined Angus' expedition"
F. Cartington. 

Route of the RBMAe's thrid expedtion.
It was a strange game, lasted a mere hour or so as the expedition hit bad terrain and managed to get out, the Natives and Tribals encountered were either Neutral or friendly, food was either abundant or in short supply, but the whole expedition  (save for a single soldier) survived !
"K" had followed my advice and headed North, avoiding crossing any river and following a river that was already known of.  His point score was well over $300, which considering his relatively short expedition was exceptional.
Here's the map of his expedtion's journey:
 

In other News:
 After this game I was wondering whether or not it was worth the effor of fighting in a swamp (from the natives' point of view and I'm now considering abandoning the idea as it makes little to no sense from the natives' pov, plus the fights are not that enjoyable as figures 'get stuck' half the time and movement is halfspeed when they can move !

Strangely this self-isolation thing hasn't had much effect on me, the major changes being I sadly no longer collect my granddaughter from school each day and neither do I go grocery shopping - which I did two or three times a week. It does mean though I have added to my painting sessions, now having two sessions a day each of about an hour or so. It's just as well, as painting the British for the Sudan is becoming tiresome and tedious, but I'm getting there!
The chap on the left is not significanlty taller than the others...

The Great photo Mystery:

I had to dig out the explorers I'd recently finished, as I couldn't remeber one figure being particularly larger than the others. Of course he wasn't !  It's an illusion caused by the camerman getting used to the new camera . The photo has been foreshortened as can be seen by the sizes of their bases seemingly getting smaller.
 (They're all 20mm square)

...but it appears that he is when taken from an angle
 So the mystery is solved, the camera is probably too good at close range !

That's it then for this week, I'm going to try and finish the Brits and also have an expedition of my own (Von Sackville's) into Jimland over the next week, which should give me something to write about in the weeks to come. 

Thanks for taking the time to visit and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated, but above all stay safe!

(I really still miss having a spellchecker on Blogger)

21 comments:

  1. Great little adventure, Joe, and that snake looked absolutely terrifying. I rather enjoyed this swamp-laden firefight, and could just imagine the characters desperately bogged down in the marsh, trying hard to shoot, not be killed themselves, and fending off that fearsome reptile. More please :-)

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    1. Thanks Blaxx, I tried my hardest to kill the expedition members off, but after my initial success I failed miserably and the snake mustn't have had its dentures in either.
      The sawmp fights can be entertaining but they take much longer than a normal fight.

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  2. Joe, what I do to get my writing spell checked (for my Play By eMail games) is copy and paste the piece of work into a draft email in google mail - it has spell checker - save the corrected piece and delete the draft email. Don't know if you could do similar?

    I hope the Explorers had the presence of mind to keep the snake skin, to sell it off back at Jim's Landing? Just think of all the potential merchandise a dead snake such as that specimen could produce ... not even considering the 'medicinal properties' that a snake oil salesman could invent! (joke)

    Make sure to keep dedicating your games to the gods Asclepius and Vejovis.

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    1. Thanks for the tip Roy,I used to typemy blogs in word, spellcheck thencut and paste, but it takes alot of timeand I doubt your way would be any quicker.
      Strangely enough I was looking at animal skins (hadn;t thought of snakeskin though) as another form of loot for explorers. I'malso including a 'free' food ration when they kill an animal in combat - bush tucker !
      My version of the rules is always 'under development'.

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  3. More goodness from Jimland - the swamp makes a nice (???) change!
    Stay safe.

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    1. Thanks MJT, I'm still undecided about swamos, I have had a few goood fights within them, but it's no fun as the natives if you haven't got missile weapons !

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  4. Great little expedition! When the lone female turned up I thought they were doomed but it all turned out nice again ( I don't know, Formby and Dads army intruding for some reason!)
    Best Iain

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    1. Thanks Iain, I too though tthe woman would sound the death knell for the expedition too, but hteir luck seems to have changed !
      Forby sound like a good namefor an explorer!

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  5. Grest adventure once again Joe. Just love the snake, he's a whopper!

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    1. Thanks Ray, the snake (2 versios) was bought in a Halloween bag a few years ago , along with many other usable critters for a mere £2 !

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  6. I do love a Jimland adventure Joe and loved the appearance of the snakes. The swamps always throw up so many surprises.

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    1. Thanks Michael, the snakes appear every as they're venomous too they're a big threat !

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  7. Another great looking part of expedition!

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  8. Another great romp through the jungle Joe, once the crisis is over hopefully K can come round for some more adventurer's.
    Stay safe in these troubled times

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    1. Thanks dave, 'K' has been the only oneoutside my family that has got in touch with me directly, so I'm very hopeful of carrying on where we left off.

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  9. Joe your adventures in Jimland are always entertaining.

    I believe you explained your hex mapping programme initially but I can't find it, would you mind directing me in the right direction. I'm hoping to start some form of play by email using whatsapp, although I've no real idea what that can do.
    I have in mind something set in the Mediterranean using Napoleonic ships and some simple campaign rules, not got much further than that but a definite requirement is the need to keep players up to date on where things are on a map.

    More Jimland is always appreciated.
    Cheers

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  10. Thanks Vagabond. I used an A4 hex shheet found on the weband duplicated it many times onto a huge map, using Photoshop. - It may be possible to use Microsoft paint. Photoshop has a cut and paste facility where I got usablehex map symols and pasted them into the hexes util I realised I could 'fill' the hexes from those that are standard on Photshop. (Jungles are 'cabbages' and mountains are clouds !
    All the bits of map I show arecropped from a master map. The sea outline is basically 'blue paint' - as are lakes. Marshes are formed froma filled blue hex with patches of 'jungle' copied and pasted. Symbols and such like also came from photoshop.
    For a simple campaing, have you looked at "Berthier" (iirc) and I'mpretty sure there are other similar free PC programs.
    A look throught the relevant section on TMP may also help.
    I had a newlease of life for Jimland having just got a regular opponent, but such is life!

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    1. Sorry Joe I didn't thank you for this info, I will need to find out how Photoshop works, all I use it for is to re-size photos and save them with a smaller file size.
      I did know more about it but that was a previous version and I've forgotten it all now. :(
      Cheers

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  11. Wow you had me on the wrong foot with the intro Joe as I was expecting Angus to become the latest victim of Jimland, but was more then happy to see that wasn't the case :)

    They say a camera never lies but like with your experience above I've often found that saying not to be true, I look forward to seen the Brits & hearing more from Jimland.

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    1. Thanks Frank, I did hope I'd catch a few folk out, but the expedition was remarkebly luck !
      My new camera has a far bigger depth of view at close ranges and I may have to experiment a bit. I didn't realise I had to sign up for Photographing models when I started blogging.

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